Good Thief, TheDirector: Neil JordanGenre: Drama Publisher: Fox Searchlight Pictures Released: 2002 MPAA Rating: R Cast: Nick Nolte, Tch�ky Karyo, Nutsa Kukhianidze |
A Review by Jeremiah Kipp
09/04/2003
On paper, it sounds like a story told twice over: A heroin addicted gentleman thief pulls himself back together for One Big Score. In fact, it is. Based on a Jean-Pierre Melville movie called Bob Le Flambeur, it's the second remake of a French pop thriller in recent years (the other being Jonathan Demme's vastly underappreciated love letter, The Truth About Charlie), the premise of The Good Thief is as familiar as George Washington's face on the $1 bill. But that's not the reason to see the movie, and anyone who categorizes films exclusively for their narratives miss out on the fact that this is a medium of motion pictures. The Good Thief is a sensory experience, because the images are rendered poetic.
But what is it about Chris Menges that makes him rank as one of the greatest cinematographers out there today? The Good Thief is highly stylized, painted in expressionistic neon: hot pink alleyways, sea green streets at night, and amber casinos. The rich color scheme adds splash, but also class and finesse. They're gentlemanly colors, mood colors�they convey the mystery of crime, and also a fascinating and intoxicating romanticism. That's brought down to earth by Nick Nolte: a rugged voice, a swagger, a bemused fascination with his multi-culti comrades and with the artwork he's thieving. Note that he's more interested in cultural artifacts than in cracking the safe; and he leaves both behind when he has the opportunity to gamble with style: he goes shopping first to pick out an impeccable wardrobe. This good thief's splendor and class manages to trump consumerism.
Menges photographs these adventures with a camera that roves and examines, but in an unhurried and interested way. Roving through clubs, or circling Nick Nolte and his team of hoods (handsome and virulent French- Moroccan Sa�d Taghmaoui; the older, silver haired G�rard Darmon; garrulous and bearded filmmaker Emir Kusturica), Menges takes a deep interest in faces. Their crevices, experience, and deep-set eyes have a power in his framing; his camera movements are suggestive of thoughts and flight. Combined with Irish auteur Neil Jordan's lush vision (here a more pumped up romanticism than the more naturalistic, though no less vivid and no less astonishing, The Crying Game and Mona Lisa and The Butcher Boy), Menges produces some of his best work in years.
Without Jordan, Menges has still been extraordinary. But his work is most memorable working with lived-in social realists like Alan Clarke (in the anti-skinhead parable Made In Britain, starring a pumped up Tim Roth who similarly popped out of Menges's head-on framing); Roland Joff� (The Killing Fields); Sean Penn (The Pledge, photographing Jack Nicholson as old and wasted�a bold choice and one of the most emotionally accurate portrayals of Jack in recent years); and�inappropriately but deftly�in Stephen Frears's recent Dirty Pretty Things�an absurdist tale of dispossessed foreigners in Britain that faked social insight in a cartoon potboiler. To understand why The Good Thief is so astonishing is to see how Frears and Dirty Pretty Things falls short.
The Good Thief admits to being magical, right from its opening shot falling from a fragmented blue sky into a seedy alleyway. In doing so, it comes closer to something approximating truth�it captures feelings of desire and emotional experience that, if we haven't lived it, at least we've dreamed it. With freeze frames at the end of most major scenes, the moments in time are paralyzed and called attention to. As a cinematic device, it feels a bit much and perhaps wears a bit thin�but it calls attention to moments in time and says Look, See, and Feel. For a movie which, at its core, is pretty thin (another heist movie�as if we needed another one), it is one of the most deftly acted, scored, designed, directed, and photographed movies of 2003. Rented on a double bill with Casablanca, it would not disappoint. They're both about rediscovered hope in rugged individuals, and rediscovered hope through the movies.
© Copyright CultureCartel.com 09/04/2003
